Biografia Bill Gates Documental

Let's welcome Bill Gates and his dancers. He started as a shy and obsessive teenager with computers, and ended up as the richest man in the world. He has never been known for carrying the lifestyle of rich and famous. Money is almost a nuisance to him. William Henry Gates III, who most people call only Bill Gates, has built an empire with an innovative way of thinking. I have no doubt that in 100 years they will talk about him in the same way they talk about Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford, as people who transformed an era. Today, after leading the digital revolution and facing several anti-monopoly battles by the government, Bill Gates is a different man from what he was a few years ago. He is a dedicated and avid golfer, who also has a portfolio of investments valued at 50 billion dollars. He could sleep in the laurels, but that's not Bill Gates' style. What makes Gates competitive is that he finds what he does fun. He sees it as an exciting game, like the ones he used to play when he was a kid. He is loved and respected, hated and vilified. But something that neither his detractors nor his supporters can deny is the lasting impact that Bill Gates has had in our time. The values that shaped Bill Gates as one of the titans of business in the 20th century come from his roots in the Northwest. Bill's great-grandfather, J.W. Maxwell, founded the first national bank in Seattle. The Maxwell's enjoyed their privileges and social position, but they never held their wealth. His son Willard, also a banker, and his wife Adele, who loved card games, were among Seattle's civil leaders. His only daughter, Mary, was a lively and intelligent girl who earned a name as a student leader at the University of Washington. Athletic and extroverted, they sometimes referred to Mary Maxwell as a dreamer. Her vigor and energy infected everyone who knew her. There are those who tend to be involved in the action. Mary was always where the action was. She was natural, simple, charming, but extremely determined. It was at the university that Mary Maxwell met and fell in love with a quiet and erudite young man, Bill Gates Jr., who was about to become one of Seattle's most prominent lawyers. When Bill and Mary got married in 1951, she decided to leave her career as a teacher to start a family and devote her time to charitable work. Christy, the first of the three sons of the Gates brothers, was born in 1953, followed by her brother Bill Gates III, born on October 28, 1955, to whom they gave the nickname of Tre. That comes from the fact that he is William H. Gates III, and the family's card players think of anything that has a three as a three, so he became Tre. Her mother had a very close relationship with Bill since he was born. She even took him with her when he started volunteering as a teacher at Seattle schools. It wasn't long before her precocious son read the World Book Encyclopedia from A to Z. Sometimes he would get lost for hours, and when I asked him what he was doing, he would answer, I'm thinking, mother. The Gates family valued competition, and little Bill loved to test his skills in outdoor activities and under-the-roof games. Among his favorite board games was Risk, where the goal was to dominate the world, and the ever-popular Monopoly, where, with a little luck, anyone can become a magnate. He competed with his sister in cards, to see who could put the puzzles together the fastest, skiing, sailing, whatever. He wanted to do everything right, as much or better than the other kids who were with him. Every summer, the Gates would go to a place called Cheerio, located on the Hood Canal. It was here where Bill, his younger sister Libby, and the rest of the family would get together to organize their own Olympic games. If you stayed overnight with them, you would be exhausted from all the games and activities. It was a very lively place. Definitely very competitive. There's no doubt about that. And the kids were part of it all. There was never a boring moment. The first World's Fair in the United States in 22 years. When the World's Fair was inaugurated in 1962, the Gates family rushed to see the wonders predicted for the 21st century, including computerized technology. Imagine, if you can, an electronic brain. Bill would usually return to see the high-tech exhibition. It was clear enough that he had an innate talent for math and science. But he was also becoming a pre-teenager, alone and with signs of rebellion that were keeping him away from his mother. Mary and I grew up in very disciplined families, where the parents controlled the personality, and we followed it. And that, in particular, did not apply to Bill or Trey, who around the age of 11 or 12 began to become emotionally independent. He was determined to know for himself what he wanted or did not want to do. And that was very difficult for us, especially for Mary. He was kind of lost. I mean, he was uncomfortable in school. He wasn't sure exactly what he wanted to do with his time. Obviously, he was a very smart guy, brilliant, but he lacked direction. And he went through a lot of therapy and he went through a change in his school. Although Bill's parents believed in public education, they felt that he would find more guidance and discipline in Lakeside, Seattle's best private high school. He began to reach his fullness in Lakeside. He was an excellent math student. He was excellent in everything, and he was brilliant in theater. He was interested in reading all kinds of books, and so on. He wasn't just oriented to science and math. He had a wide range of interests. When Bill began high school in 1969, the U.S. space program was at its peak. Apollo 11 had taken man to the moon in July of that year. But the computers that had made it possible were still giants that cost millions of dollars and needed a platoon of people to handle them. Most schools didn't consider the possibility of buying a computer, but Lakeside had made a deal that would influence Bill Gates' fate. A company in Seattle offered the school to use its computer through a link. Young Gates was delighted with the possibilities of this primitive machine and began to spend every free moment in the computer room. The story that is often told is completely true. He would get up at night, go to work with the computer, and return without realizing that he had left. Bill Gates shared his addiction with a student from a more advanced class, Paul Allen, who could not be more different from Gates. He was not only two years older than him, but also significantly older. While Allen was of a quiet and contemplative nature, Bill could be strident and controversial. However, this strange couple was destined to make history together. While attending the prestigious Lakeside Preparatory School, Bill Gates met Paul Allen, a student from a more advanced class who shared his obsession with computers. Paul Allen and Bill Gates became very close by writing programming codes together with which they somehow competed, but from time to time they fought. One day, Paul Allen voted for Bill Gates, who was younger than him, from a group of programmers who had graduated. However, he later realized that he needed Gates to return. He could not continue without him. Upon returning, Gates said, I am happy to have returned, but now I will be in charge. By 1970, when Bill was only 15 years old, he and Paul Allen partnered up in a business. The boys had a net profit of $20,000 with Draft or Data, a computerized program that they created to measure car traffic in Seattle. Although Bill came from a wealthy family, he was determined from the beginning to form his own fortune. The father of one of Bill's childhood friends said he had a sense of business. Even during his childhood, he already knew the value of a contract. And so much so that he had an agreement to use his older sister's baseball glove, which was signed as a legal document. In the summer of 1972, at the age of 17, Bill went to the city of Washington to work as a page of the Senate. This contact with politics and government would be very useful to him later. Upon returning home in the fall, he took a break from school, when he and Paul Allen were given the opportunity to have their first real job in a computer company. They began to talk about starting their own company, but Gates insisted that his son finish high school and study at the university. His mother used to worry about him because he was socially retarded. Well, maybe he was, but he had other things on his mind. He was not rude, he was not abrupt. He was working at his own pace. He's a genius, and he has different priorities. Bill graduated from Lakeside in 1973, and his parents were proud when he was accepted at Harvard University. So he left Seattle and went east, to Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a first-year student, it occurred to him to enter law school, but no study class inspired his imagination like his work with computers. Bill was the kind of person who was always determined to do what really interested him. The things that less interested him, which usually included academic activities, he left in the hands of his talent. I remember that there was an introduction course to Greek literature, in which he did not do, if I remember correctly, any of the jobs throughout the year. The night before the exam, he stayed studying. He slept in part of the exam, and even with all that, he did well. It was no surprise that Gates fell asleep in an exam. Between classes and the time he spent at Harvard's Computer Center, he seemed to be awake 24 hours a day. He was always focused on what he was doing. He could enter the room and, without changing his clothes, lay down on the bed, which of course was not arranged, because he did not have time for that, and fall asleep. With the door open, clothes on, he simply lay down and fell asleep. Then, when he regained energy, he got up and returned to what he was doing. Bill rested enough to make some friends at Harvard. However, his social life was not a priority. He occasionally went out with girls, and had different degrees of success. I interviewed several women who went out with Bill for a short time, and one of them told me that the first thing Bill had asked was the score he had obtained in the academic evaluation test. This is not exactly what young people want to hear. However, for Bill Gates, who had scored a perfect score in the math section, it was something to be proud of, and he wanted the person he went out with to also have a high score. Bill was excellent at math, but as expected, when he realized that he was not the number one in mathematics at Harvard, he declined his intention to become a mathematician. While keeping his academic options open, he decided to acquire new skills outside of class. He spent a lot of his time playing video games, especially poker, which was something we all did in our university days. But it was Paul Allen, Bill's former schoolmate and partner, who gave Gates his biggest stroke of luck. Allen had moved from Seattle to Boston for work. In December 1974, he found a magazine in Harvard Square. The cover of Popular Electronics announced the arrival of the world's first small computer team, the Altair 8800. He immediately went to show himself to Bill. Gates and Allen immediately knew that the time had come for the personal computer. They saw that this came with incredible strength and dynamics towards society, and they realized the opportunity. The Altair had been manufactured by a small company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, not far from an old atomic test site in Alamogordo. Ed Roberts, director of the company, was looking for someone to create the software to run it on his small computer. Gates and Allen convinced him that they were the right people to do it, and they worked day and night at Harvard's Computer Center for two months. In February 1975, Paul Allen went to Albuquerque to test the program he and Gates had developed. When he loaded into the Altair what Bill Gates called the best code I've ever written, it worked. The importance of that moment changed Bill Gates' life forever and the software industry. In the summer of 1975, Bill Gates, 19 years old, and his partner Paul Allen founded Microsoft. His work with the Altair computer company by Ed Roberts was so overwhelming that Bill left Harvard just before his last year and moved to Albuquerque. Mary Gates was deeply disappointed with her son's decision. We told him that we had saved our money for him to go to college, and that if he didn't finish in a few years, we would give him another use for that money. At that moment, he told us that he was fine and that he could save his own money to come back if he was given the opportunity. Bill was sure that he had made the right decision, but having success with the software wouldn't be easy. The stage of personal computers was full of users eager to share new information and software without paying for it. It was a practice that put Bill in trouble with his peers. There were a bunch of college and high school students who were doing something unconventional, and Bill was very unpopular because he began to tell them not to steal the information that they had generated and that belonged to them. And he was just a businessman in the midst of a bunch of computer pirates and morons. In fact, Gates wrote an open letter to computer enthusiasts, scolding them for making copies of the Microsoft program. He began by saying, As most fans should know, many of you steal the software. The team is something you have to pay for, but the software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it were paid? Is that fair? However, those who did it, in the end, are the ones who lose. He was seen as a renegade, and it was a different ethic that reigned at that time. However, I'm not sure that the software industry would have evolved much without someone who got up and said what was needed. Bill also battled with Ed Roberts, who considered him spoiled and hateful. Both disagreed on almost everything, and Roberts was an imposing adversary. Ed Roberts was a huge man, about 1.95 meters tall and 135 kilograms. While Bill, who had graduated from Microsoft at the age of 19, still looked like a teenager, and yet he stood in front of this man face to face in verbal confrontations. In May 1977, there was a final confrontation when Roberts sold his business, and Gates had to sue him to maintain the software that he and Paul Allen had created for the company. Gates won. We take a hard line on software. Microsoft expanded into new software languages, and Gates and Allen began selling their products to other computing companies. At the end of 1978, with sales close to a million dollars, they moved Microsoft from Albuquerque to Seattle. Bill was pleased to return and invested a large amount of resources to promote his company. We always design thinking about the future. Our research staff is always looking for the latest in software equipment and technology. It was Bill Gates, the genius of marketing behind Microsoft. Early on, he was the one who went out to sell his company and his software, and on many occasions, he would take his mother with him on his trips. Bill was highly respected, and his well-related mother served as a pivot at the beginning of his career. Mary had worked with many corporate boards, as well as at the University of Washington. She was part of the National Board of United Way. Next to her was the General Director of IBM, and it was through her that her son met him. What would your ideal home computer be like? By November 1980, IBM was giving Microsoft's newbies a hard time. The largest computer company wanted to talk to Gates and Allen about the creation of an operating system for their new line of personal computers. From their first meeting, IBM had the wrong idea of their interlocutors. He looked like a teenager. He was skinny, and he had a real moff of hair, and he was kind of casual, and basically they didn't take him seriously as a businessman. But IBM executives soon realized that Gates was no amateur. He quickly convinced them that Microsoft could create their new software. First, he bought the existing operating system, and then he adapted it for IBM's personal computers. He called it the MS-DOS. Bill Gates, as an astute businessman, who always knew where to get an operating system, only went out and bought it for $50,000. However, the brilliant thing was that, when developing the operating system for IBM, they wanted to buy the source code, so they would have had the operating system disk, which was known as the DOS. However, Microsoft refused to give in to the rights of the DOS. But not having the rights to the operating system, IBM had to pay a fee to Microsoft for each copy of the DOS installed on their computers. It can help a manager excel. The IBM personal computer. There were all kinds of computers at that time, and I was worried because I didn't know who could win in the hardware business. However, Microsoft had very good chances of winning. Between 1978 and 1981, Microsoft's growth was amazing. The staff increased from 13 to 128 employees. Income grew rapidly from $4 to $16 million. By 1983, 30% of all personal computers in the world ran with Microsoft software. However, Bill Gates never neglected the end result. He never traveled in first class unless it was absolutely necessary. Usually, you could find him sitting with a blanket over his face to be able to sleep a little. His parents taught him well about the value of money and work, which he then applied not only in the management of his personal life, but in the way he ran Microsoft. My name is Bill Gates, and I'm chairman of Microsoft. During the 1980s, it was an exciting time for an industry mostly run by people under 30. Microsoft began working on software for innovative companies like Apple and its guru, Steve Jobs. Their computer, Macintosh, and software were considered by many to be the most intelligent invention in the industry and the road to the future. To create new standards, you need something that really captures people's imagination, and Macintosh, of all the machines I've ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard. But it wasn't long before Microsoft and Apple were involved in a fight for the rights of the next generation of software. Bill Gates was also about to receive news that would affect Microsoft to its core. By 1983, the future couldn't have been more promising for Bill Gates, 28, and Microsoft. The business of personal computers was on the rise, and even more so, the demand for software. Bill Gates and Paul Allen emerged as the princes of the era of personal computers. However, in the midst of their company's rapid rise, they were hit by terrible news. Paul Allen, Bill's friend and business partner since high school, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, a form of cancer. Allen's disease came into remission a year later. However, he didn't become a part of Microsoft's business 100%. This was the end of an era for the two men of 30 years who had created a world-renowned company generating millions of dollars. I think history is going to show how incredibly dynamic their society really was. I often compare it to Millennium and McCartney, the Beatles. The songs they wrote together are the ones we remember and hear over and over again. Individually, they were great songwriters, and we still hear the songs they wrote separately, but somehow together they were much more than the sum of their parts. And Paul and Bill were like that. By 1984, Bill Gates had become the central focus of Microsoft. In April of that year, he was named by Time magazine as the representative par excellence of the new generation of entrepreneurs, one who understood both the technological detail and corporate strategies. When you work with Bill, you can see that in almost every meeting or discussion he gets involved in, he immediately lists all the cases that might occur, what's this, what's that, and so on and so forth. And he builds a mental list of everything that could happen in a very structured way, and then he goes through it. File system in failure test mode, super advanced. Microsoft was often referred to as a mathematical camp where the demanding style of Gates' management kept the creative process active, and sometimes started strong confrontations. At the beginning, Gates questioned everything. Anything for him was the biggest stupidity in the world. But part of this was to test and challenge others. If you didn't agree with him, you had to convince him that the idea was not the biggest stupidity in history. A constant challenge of ideas was necessary to stay at the top of an industry that changed. With the launch of the new software, we became octopuses. There's a story about Bill from Miriam Lubau, his assistant. He had just arrived at the company, and one morning he came in and couldn't call the police because there was a man sleeping under his desk, who turned out to be Bill. But it turned out to be better. Microsoft accounted for more than $140 million in sales during 1985. In 1986, Gates introduced Microsoft Windows, which would become the company's star program. Critics soon noticed that the use of the mouse and icons was more than a small resemblance to Apple's Macintosh operating system, considered the most user-friendly. If you know how to point, you already know how to use it. Macintosh. The computer for the rest of us. Apple had given Gates full access to its technology while working on a new software for the Macintosh computer. Gates had advised Apple to register its software. However, Apple was more interested in selling computers than software, so they ignored the suggestion. Once again, Gates took advantage of the opportunity. In this industry, we compete, but we also help each other. Bill once had a conversation with me, and he said, I'm a competitor, we're friends. Don't tell me information you don't want me to use against you because I'm going to compete with you. If you tell me something useful to compete, I'm going to use it. Apple decided it wouldn't let Gates own its business and threatened to sue it for Windows. Gates, in response, said he would retain Microsoft's software that Apple desperately needed for its computers. In the end, Microsoft beat Apple in court. In the end, Microsoft prevailed by showing that, although there were similarities in the way computers operated, each individual Windows function was considerably different from each individual Macintosh function. Although the first version of Windows had its flaws, it gave Microsoft a new financial and creative foundation. In 1986, Bill Gates made his company public. He kept 45% of the shares, which made him a multimillionaire at the age of 31. However, Gates never felt confident about the status of his company. It doesn't want to fail, and when you feel that kind of fear and you're always looking over your shoulder, checking that there's no one who will creep up, you will find out at any moment, it consumes you, and it makes it the most competitive human being in the industry of personal computers. It's certainly the most competitive human in the computer industry. It has a fiery intensity. Gates was also gaining the reputation of being ruthless, and some powerful people began to align themselves against him. Now that PCs were starting to boom, IBM decided to give a big boost to its own operating system, which replaced the DOS system, which was Microsoft's license. It was called OS2. We were concerned that we could face the storm that was coming, especially because it was very strong. IBM, a very powerful company with a lot of programmers, a lot of money, and a lot of determination to get Microsoft out of the operating system business. Ironically, Microsoft participated in the development of OS2. However, Bill Gates had no intention of abandoning his software. He decided to play with the future of his company and his reputation with Windows software, and his team continued to improve it, even if that meant losing IBM, which was his biggest client. On May 22, 1990, Microsoft launched Windows 3.0. This new and improved version quickly became a sales success. In the end, OS2 failed in the market, leaving Microsoft practically with a monopoly on PC operating systems. With this, the Federal Trade Commission began to denounce that Gates was using his domain in operating systems to end the competition by reducing the prices of Microsoft products. Apparently, the peaceful president of Microsoft was gaining a destructive image. Bill Gates is not a ruthless man. He just needs to win, and he is willing to do it, with or without courtesy. He doesn't care. A triumph is a triumph, anyway. The price war was not the only charge imposed on Microsoft. In 1993, the Department of Justice began a new investigation. Gates had to face one of his strongest adversaries, the government of the United States. In 1993, Bill Gates and Microsoft were under investigation by the Department of Justice of the United States. They analyzed complaints, according to which Microsoft charged computer manufacturers a fee based on the number of computers sold, including those that did not have Microsoft software installed. They made computer manufacturers pay for Microsoft software, regardless of whether or not it was installed on the computer. In this way, they prevented their competitors from entering the market. The Department of Justice accused Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, of using unfair marketing practices. In July 1994, Microsoft agreed to stop charging the fee in question, and the Department of Justice dismissed the case. Gates never admitted that Microsoft had a monopoly, and argued that they simply provided software that was better at a lower price. We're not predators that go around eating everything. We go to the market with these little boxes, these little packages of friendly software, that you install on your computer and you can have fun and do your job using it. But for investors, it wasn't that simple. The government investigation and the fights with IBM and Apple caused a fall in value for Microsoft's shares. Now there was more pressure than ever to launch the next version of Windows. Gates found ingenious ways to reduce the tension. Commercial appearances of the company in the company of Microsoft's star executive, Steve Ballmer. Sometimes he made dramatic entries when trying to sell his company at software conventions. One time he arrived like Mr. Spock from Star Trek. Gates also established micro-games. This competition of games between Microsoft employees is reminiscent of the games of his childhood on the Hood Channel. It was like a summer camp for adults. We all went to his house and spent months thinking about what games we were going to have. He was also the master of ceremonies sometimes. He formed the teams taking care of the dynamics between us and the way we would interact. And so we participated in those games that looked like summer camp and it was in some micro-games where I met Melinda. Melinda, formerly known as Melinda French, was a 28-year-old girl who graduated from Duke University with a post-graduate degree in administration. She had worked as a Microsoft executive for several years. It was very clear to Bill's family and friends that she was the woman with whom Gates, 37 years old, had decided to spend the rest of his days. He dated Melinda for a while before they got married, so I saw them together for several years. It always seemed to me that there was something very special between them, a high level of intimacy and intellectual connection that was effervescent. She's a wonderful person. The ideal partner for him. Very intelligent, organized, supportive, attached to his family and oriented towards family life. Bill and Melinda got married in Hawaii on January 1, 1994. On the eve of the ceremony, Bill prepared a very special serenade for Melinda. He got Willie Nelson to sing the night before his wedding, and it was a big surprise. Bill got up and said, I really love Melinda and I would love to sing for her tonight. But since he didn't sing very well, he asked a friend to sing for us. So it was a big surprise. In Melinda, Bill found a partner who gave him that personal happiness that he had sought so much, in addition to understanding the professional requirements of his business. However, a few months after their marriage, the happiness that Bill shared with his family became pain. His mother, Mary, who had been his most faithful ally, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She died on the morning of June 10, 1994. Bill ran home to be with his mother. We came to the house that night, after being stopped by a police officer for speeding. Of course, the officer recognized him. By the way, it wasn't the first time that he was stopped for this reason. And... when he looked at us, he asked us what was going on. Because the tears were running down my face. He said, I'm sorry. He said that my mother just died. The officer let us continue with the condition of slowing down. He was deeply affected by his mother's death. We were all. In the following years, Bill followed in his mother's footsteps and continued with his work, creating a philanthropic foundation to help large health and education projects. But all his fortune and power would not protect him from the crisis that he and Microsoft would have to face later. By 1995, Bill Gates, 39 years old, had established himself as a husband and a family man. Together with his wife Melinda, he took a break to explore from Africa to China. Now it seemed that Bill Gates had it all. This is a man, a man so successful that his driver is Ross Perot. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Bill Gates and his dancers. 1995 was also a year of success for Microsoft. Windows 95 was presented with great fanfare. The Tonight Show, led by Jay Leno, presented the new software with bombs and cymbals. Windows 95 is so simple that even the host of an interview program can understand it. Wow! It was clear that Gates was still the best seller at Microsoft. But from that moment on, they were no longer just going to do business for the boss. On April 26, 1996, Bill and Melinda had their first daughter, Jennifer. He just loved this little girl. It's so wonderful to see him as a father. For me, it's very gratifying to see that my son has that same feeling towards his children that I felt for him and his brothers. It's really gratifying. A year after the birth of his daughter, Bill moved with his family to a dream house worth $54 million. Along with the family's rooms and guests, there is the library that houses Leonardo da Vinci's notebook, for which Gates paid more than $30 million. However, although the house serves for many business activities, for the Gates family, it is only their home. It's an extraordinarily familiar and friendly home. I remember that the first time I came in after I finished, I was walking through it and I found little toy cars in various places and things like that. I mean, this is not an antiseptic home where you are afraid to touch or sit anywhere. While Bill Gates' personal life was fully developing, his professional life was frustrated. By 1997, he found that he was quite behind in the use of the Internet market. A company called Netscape dominated the sales of Internet users, the software required to have access to web pages. Gates set out to close the gap by including Explorer, his own browser, with each copy of Windows. Many saw it as a dirty move, a move to eliminate their main opponent. If Microsoft chooses to disadvantage Netscape or any other competitor, then the consumer will not have a fair supply and when this happens, the market cannot function effectively. In 1998, Gates was appointed to the Senate, where he was once a page and was accused of running an illegal monopoly. I hope that my testimony will help the court to resolve the problem with this case. That would be the best for consumers and the industry. That's why I'm here. Thank you. The Justice Department of President Bill Clinton, together with 19 states, filed an anti-monopoly lawsuit against Microsoft. It was in its category the largest lawsuit in the history of the computer industry. Currently, Microsoft has the power to exercise predatory and exclusionary control over the media through which we connect to the Internet. It's very similar to General Motors having the power to decide what kind of gasoline you put in your car or what interstate you should take or even how you get to the interstate. In 2000, a federal judge ruled that the company should be divided in two. After more than two decades of constant success, this was a very hard blow for Bill Gates. The anti-monopoly trial deeply affected Bill Gates. It affected him a lot that he was accused of being bad-tempered, arrogant, that he didn't answer questions clearly, that he was trying to obstruct the prosecution. The anti-monopoly lawsuit lasted four years and cost Microsoft millions of dollars in legal fees. In the end, in 2002, the Justice Department, under the administration of President George Bush, offered Microsoft a favorable agreement. That was a moment of despair for the detractors of Microsoft and a moment of triumph for Bill Gates and his company. In the midst of the anti-monopoly lawsuit, Bill Gates surprised many by resigning as CEO and appointing himself as President and Chief of Architecture at Software. The job of CEO was left to his old Harvard friend, Steve Ballmer. They're old friends and Gates really wanted to be just the man of ideas. Actually, he wanted to go back a little and that's what he did. He's currently working very well. It was very difficult for him to let go of his creature, but he got used to it. During the last decade, Bill Gates has had a mission, to share his wealth. In 2000, he formed the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which invests millions of dollars annually in computers, medicine, and vaccines for those who need it most. In the world, the difference between the rich and the poor is very marked. The collective awareness of the AIDS crisis and the effective interventions are very, very low. The time has come now to change these things. Well, what Bill Gates has said is that he will give away 90% of his fortune before the end of his life. The industry keeps changing. It's the perfect game because it never ends, so you can sit down and relax. A few months later, Gates continued his campaign to reduce world poverty, making a surprising appearance during the LIFE AIDS event. There, he addressed the public around the world, especially the most important If we increase the resources given by the rich countries, we can save lives. We know how to spend those resources wisely, and I think it's important for people to understand that. They really approach the issue of world poverty from a different perspective. Their new approach is a little more passionate about helping people to help themselves. And that's what makes the difference and makes people change and don't see poverty as a lost cause. Always looking to the future, this visionary is investing a lot of his energy in expanding the Microsoft market around the world, in areas like the Middle East and China. Gates' main mission is to increase and strengthen the implementation of Microsoft's technology in the computer systems of these regions. Despite everything, William Henry Gates and his company face constant challenges with their competitors, from Apple to Google. But Microsoft is betting everything on the next version of its Windows operating system, now called Windows Vista. To the delight of the detractors of Microsoft, this launch has had some delays. Originally scheduled for 2005, the launch was rescheduled for December 2006 and represents the biggest advance of the Windows platform since version 95. It is designed to be the basis on which the industry will be able to build a new path towards innovation. Meanwhile, Gates and Microsoft have focused their efforts on improving their software to fight against computer viruses and spam. It is said that Gates himself receives 4 million unwanted emails a day. Whether you remember him as a thief, a philanthropist or simply the man who designed a better trap for mice, no one can deny that Bill Gates and his company are prepared to continue to reap successes in the 21st century.